Tag Archives: futility

Bikini

Bikini: (n) a very brief two-piece swimsuit for women.

Dictionary B

I grew up in a time when seeing a woman in a bikini at the swimming pool was like looking at pornography.

Since we didn’t have dirty pictures on the Internet, the only time there was an opportunity to view partially exposed breasts and the majority of a female torso was at the local pool.

When bikinis became popular, girls immediately started wearing them because they thought they were “cute.”

I think deep in their consciousness, these young ladies were aware that they were torturing the boys by displaying the fruits of the flesh without offering them a chance to take a bite.

I vividly recall the first time I saw a girl in a bikini. I spontaneously had an orgasm. It wasn’t planned. It’s probably not something I should even share. But I do so because it always reminds me of the sense of humor our Creator had in constructing human beings–and also our timetable.

At the moment in life when we have the most sexual prowess, we also have the least control. And later on, when viewing a bikini is still pleasurable but no longer eruptive, our plumbing seems to be a bit clogged.

I am sure the heavens find this to be hilarious. I know God must be a gentle trickster–because He does fool us into believing that we are much more powerful than we actually are.

And then, when we scatter our efforts and end up with futility, He is there as a kindly Father, to retrieve our egos and allow us to live another day.

I will always like bikinis, but there is nothing at all as powerful and poignant as the first one I viewed at the local swimming hole…when I practically lost my head.

Donate Button

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 

Begat

Dictionary B

Begat: (v) past-tense of beget: to procreate or generate

A genealogy.

A lineage.

One day, in a fit of boredom, I opened up the Gospel of Matthew in the Good Book and began to read the names of men who lived their lives only to be given a footnote in history in reference to a child they procreated.

I was overcome with a deep sense of meaninglessness.

There has to be more to life than spawning.

I certainly love my sons, but I don’t want to be known merely as the father of offspring instead of the instigator of springing off a new idea.

Is that wrong?

Should I be more focused on the by-product of my genitalia? It annoys me because it seems to have a cave-man quality of “obsession with possession.”

And especially when I realized, upon finishing up with that lineage of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, that the whole process was interrupted by a supernal notion from a heavenly Father–to insert a woman as the mother of Jesus and the matron of salvation.

Fascinating.

Maybe it was necessary for God to establish the lineage to emphasize its futility.

Similar to playing 24 games of tic-tac-toe before you realize that no one ever wins.

Donate Button

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 

Antipathy

dictionary with letter A

Antipathy: (n) a deep-seated dislike or aversion.

“Let’s take a vote!”

It was the scream that rattled a van I was traveling in many years ago with a bunch of kids from a church camp. Yes, any time any subject was brought up concerning the day’s activities or where we were going to eat, the children suddenly became democratic.

I wanted to be open-minded.

I wanted to be considered one of the “cool adults.” So I gave into the notion that the kids should have a right to determine their favorite projects and preferred tasty treats.

After traveling, playing and eating like this with a bunch of pre-teens for four days, I was not only constipated from the food choices, but also completely exhausted from absolutely meaningless activity.

The only thing I achieved was getting an extra ice-cream bar given to me by the collective horde for being the coolest counselor at the camp.

But unfortunately, the other adults at the camp were not nearly as impressed with my loose leadership.

I will tell you of a certainty that this problem is not limited to younger folks who have not yet discovered the purpose of life. For please consider–there are just some things on our journey that are not up for voting or discussion.

1. Loving people.

I don’t want to hear you tell me how hard it is to do or how you’ve been cheated or how you believe that God really would like to kill some folks. Here’s the end of the discussion: God loves people, and if you want to get anywhere near God, you’d better go along with His idea.

2. “I don’t want to change.”

That is most unfortunate. Maybe when we get done changing, we can give an ear on why it frustrates you. But showing up in a world that is structures through evolution and deciding that you’re not going to change is demanding that your hard head be forcibly cracked open.

Things are going to change and the only way you gain any control is by getting ahead of it instead of having the wheels of progress roll over your ribcage.

3. “I’m busy.”

No, you’re not. And the best way to become overwhelmed is to think you’re busy because then you’ll slow up and end up procrastinating, creating more work for tomorrow, which causes you to appear completely inept.

I am astounded at how much I get done when I don’t take the time to discuss how much it is.

So those are three things that can’t be voted on by our childish whim. In other words, some things need to be left alone and pursued with all of our passion, because believe it or not…they’re just right.

 

Donate Button

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Alchemist

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alchemy: (n) the medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter. It was concerned particularly with attempts to convert base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir.

“I need more.”

Those three words form one of the more useless phrases in the English language. Yet the proclamation–or at least the sentiment–is in the air constantly.

I don’t know when we established the notion that pleading poverty, lack or futility is an acceptable profile for human behavior. What I mean is, even though we all pull up lame and make excuses, we privately hate it when it is done by others.

I have really noticed this over the past ten years. About a decade ago, I realized that whatever is going to happen in my career, dreams and aspirations has already happened, and unless I learn to take what is available and turn it into something better, I will become disgruntled.

One of the more stupid attributes of the human family is the insistence that we’re waiting for our “big break.” It’s why I would never buy a lottery ticket. Buying one would demand buying at least a dozen others in order to increase your potential, even though the odds of the bonanza coming my way are astronomical.

I want to stop complaining about what I have–and turn it into gold (or at least some yellow material that would pass.) That’s what the alchemists did. Their main claim was that they could change lead into gold. (Maybe that’s what we mean by “getting the lead out.”)

Yes, if I stop looking at the lead that comes my way and start using it more productively, maybe some gold will come out of it. I don’t know about you–I’m a little tired of seeing people turn gold into lead:

  • I’m weary of a religious system that takes a gospel of love and transforms it into a mediocre pabulum of rules and regulations.
  • I’m angered by the nobility of the American dream and the cause of freedom being denigrated down to voting, campaigns and political gridlock.
  • And I am certainly bedraggled by the hounding about “family” in our society, while we simultaneously have entertainment and shows portraying the relationship as detrimental or even destructive.

You and I have one responsibility: stop bitching about what we’ve got and try to turn it into something more.

Because quite bluntly, if we don’t understand that this is the mission of human life … we will end up leaving behind much less than what we were given.

 

Ain’t

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Ain’t: contraction of am not, are not, is not, will not: e.g. if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Every three weeks I experience a ritual. Yes, quite predictable. Every twenty-one days, I get a note from some austere, tight-assed grammarian, commenting on my wording, syntax or style of expressing ideas. These people have three things in common:

  • They’re always sure they’re right.
  • They’re always sure I’m wrong.
  • They are affronted by my lack of understanding of proper writing and suggest that I go back to Hoboken or wherever I last mis-learned my craft.

My thought? The best way to get a pain in the ass is to sit on it too long doing nothing. Thus the critic.

I will tell you this: words are powerful when they communicate and useless when they don’t.

For instance, there are passages from the Good Book, which I am told is divinely inspired, which are incomprehensible. I will wager that most people who teach in English departments and promote the great works of literature have not read those volumes themselves but instead, rely on Cliff notes to summarize the material.

Let’s be honest: “I ain’t gonna study war no more” is the best way to express that sentiment. Other options, like, “I am not going to study war anymore” seem to lose some punch. Or how about this one? “The pursuit of studying war has lost its meaning for me.” I guess at that point it would change from being a Negro spiritual to a Harvard spiritual.

Even though my English teachers told me that the word “ain’t” should never be used and would eventually become obsolete, the truth is, the only thing that became obsolete were my English teachers.

Here are three quick criteria for good writing:

  1. It’s understandable.
  2. It tells a story.
  3. The story lives on.

Anything other than this is just an exercise in futility which doesn’t create muscles anywhere … except in your self-righteous ego.

Admonish

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAdmonish: (v) to warn or reprimand someone firmly

I really do not know why this word is in the dictionary.

I suppose it’s there because we all have accidentally or ignorantly decided to admonish another human being, only to discover that we were given bad attitude, resistance and actually, more often than not, pushed them right back into their iniquity.

For after all, it is a word usually associated with child-rearing. You know–those occasions when we sit our offspring down and explain to them in vivid detail the error of their ways and the danger of their path.

But writing this essay today, I have to ask myself if I have EVER heeded an admonishment.

I have come to myself and decided to change certain behavior. But every time someone ELSE has made it his or her mission to create that change in me, I have resisted to the point of rebellion (although in the presence of other folks I might pretend I had heeded the heated advice).

But I didn’t.

Truthfully, I resented the hell out of someone treating me like I was a teenager taking the car out for a joy ride without permission.

This is why I yearned for my eighteenth birthday–so I wouldn’t have to listen to people tell me what to do. I am a typical son of Adam and Eve in the sense that if you tell me there’s a tree from which I should not eat, it is the location where I will probably decide to have lunch.

Honestly, it’s how I can tell that parts of the Bible ARE divinely inspired, and other portions are the inventions of men trapped in their own culture and time, who did their best to venture a good guess.

You can encourage people. I am not so certain you can admonish them.

You can exhort people. Admonishment will go out the back door as quickly as it came in the front.

You can steer, cheer, jeer, and leer at folks and probably get by with it. But when you sit them down and try to recreate the atmosphere that should have happened when they were children being instructed on Mommy and Daddy’s knees, you are about to unleash all the fury of their frustration.

So what can we do if we know that someone is destroying himself and is steeped in great error?

The two paths available to the wise man or woman who want to affect their world are:

  1. Set a great visible example
  2. Pray that God uses the natural order to bring truth to the forefront.

There you go.

So “admonish” is in the dictionary because we do it with our children–to limited success.

When we try to apply it to our adult friends, we have generated the definition for another word: futility.